Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
5.
Change the values shown in the host proi le.
6.
Click Next and then Finish to save the changes to the host proi le.
Although this procedure describes only how to change DNS settings, the steps for changing
other settings within a host proi le are much the same. This allows you to quickly create a host
proi le based on a reference host but then customize the host proi le until it represents the cor-
rect “golden coni guration” for your hosts.
Host proi les don't do anything until they are attached to ESXi hosts. Click the Attach/
Detach A Host Proi le To Hosts And Clusters button just below the Objects tab in the vSphere
Web Client to open a dialog box that allows you to select one or more ESXi hosts to which the
host proi le should be attached.
After a host proi le has been attached to an ESXi host, checking for compliance is as simple
as right-clicking that host on the Hosts And Clusters tab and selecting Host Proi le
➢
Check
Compliance from the context menu.
If an ESXi host is found noncompliant with the settings in a host proi le, you can then place
the host in maintenance mode and apply the host proi le. When you apply the host proi le, the
settings found in the host proi le are enforced on that ESXi host to bring it into compliance. Note
that some settings require a reboot to take effect.
To truly understand the power of host proi les, consider a group of ESXi hosts in a cluster. We
haven't discussed clusters yet, but as you'll see elsewhere in the topic—especially in Chapter 5
and Chapter 6—ESXi hosts in a cluster need to have consistent settings. Without a host proi le,
you would have to manually review and coni gure these settings on each host in the cluster.
With a host proi le that captures the settings, adding a new host to the cluster is a simple two-
step process:
1.
Add the host to vCenter Server and to the cluster.
2.
Attach the host proi le and apply it.
That's it. The host proi le will enforce all the settings on this new host that are required to
bring it into compliance with the settings on the rest of the servers in the cluster. This is a huge
advantage for larger organizations that need to quickly deploy new ESXi hosts.
Host proi les are also hugely important when using vSphere Auto Deploy to create a stateless
environment. In stateless environments using Auto Deploy, coni guration settings aren't persis-
tent between reboots. To keep your stateless ESXi hosts properly coni gured, you'll want to use
host proi les to apply the proper settings so that the host retains a consistent coni guration over
time, even when it's rebooted.
As explained, host proi les really start to become benei cial when your environment has a
large number of ESXi host to keep things consistent and manageable. However, host proi les are
not the only feature included with vSphere that assists with management; a relatively recent
addition to help with this is tags.
Tags
Nearly every item within a vCenter inventory can have a label and metadata added to it by the
way of tags. Tags let you group related items together using categories, and they help sort and
manage your vCenter objects. Tags can be both exclusive and inclusive, which gives you great
l exibility when you design your metadata structure. Let us explain how this might be useful
with an example. Say that you want to know which VMs belong to the engineering team, but
